So in about a month or so when the 5e game that I'm running comes to a close, one of the other members of the group will take over and run Out of the Abyss. Which means I get to play a character, something I don't often get to do in any kind of extended way. I tend to go...a little apeshit with my characters, and this is an elaborate enough one that I think I'm going to keep an account of all the ridiculously too-much-free-time things I'm doing to prepare for the game, like writing a 20 page backstory or making a little custom padded box for the heavily customized minis I'll be using.

Or the spellbook.

I bought a blank book at Hobby Lobby and began constructing a self-contained character sheet/list of spells/list of class mechanics and background details. With calligraphy. I got a fair amount of it done and realized with the amount of room in the book that I'd allocated for spells I didn't have quite as much room for everything else as I would like, so I went back to Hobby Lobby to get a second book (they're like four dollars) to cannibalize some pages out of and add them to the current book. Trouble is I found another better kind of blank book with better quality pages and more of them so...I decided to start over.

Not enough is done yet on it to show other than the character sheet in the endpaper,

but I decided to go ahead and post the thread mostly because for the foreword of the new book I ended up writing a poem, and I realized it's especially relevant to this forum.

For context, Elegy Overleaf is a wizard (will take one level in cleric) who grew up in Candlekeep, loves it there, and wouldn't have had any interest in adventuring if certain shit hadn't happened.

Ahem.

When tales are told of days of old,Of swordsman, thief, and mage,The minstrel's song transports the throngUnto a bygone age.When says the lord that every swordMust to his banners muster,The heralds cry, the ravens fly,That all might hear his bluster.When prophets speak, soothsayers shriek,And seers rave and rant,Trust not a word, save what is heardWhen sounds the Endless Chant.But speech alone remains unknownTo those who did not hear,And knowledge dies when mem'ry's eyesBy years are made unclear.No time for sleep at Candlekeep,For battle we must wage!By Oghma's grace, mine hand doth placeThe quill upon the page.

Love is a lie. Only hate endures. Light is blinding. Only in darkness do we see clearly.

"Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but.. blinding. The shadows betray you because they belong to me." - Bane The Dark Knight Rises

Well, the campaign's been going for almost three years. In addition to the spellbook, I started a handwritten journal and...filled it and started another. I've finally started scanning and uploading the pages. Right now it's just on my Twitter, @saberinblue but I'll be putting them up in a much easier to digest form as well. Counting the spellbook, there's about 3-400 pages of this stuff so far, so I'll be posting quite a bit in this thread once I decide how best to display the stuff.